And another strong year! Character actor Tom McCarthy made his directorial debut with The Station Agent, a lovely film. He continues to make fine small movies. (Also, I would love to see his version of the Game of Thrones pilot!) Peter Jackson completed his flawed but awesome adaption of Tolkien's opus and, a decade later, has yet to direct another good movie, though not for lack of ambition. Kevin Macdonald broke out with docudrama Touching the Void, which he would follow up with the very good Last King of Scotland before failing to make good on the promise of these two movies. This is the year of the only Sofia Coppola movie I can sit through. Bong Joon-ho establishes himself as a director to keep an eye on with Memories of Murder (which could make an interesting double-feature with Fincher's Zodiac) -- he has gone on to become one of my favorite directors. In fact, looking at this year's list this seems to be the year Korea really became a force to be reckoned with in cinema.

Runners-up: Battlestar Galactica (Rymer), The Story of the Weeping Camel (Davaa and Falorni), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir), Zelary (Trojan), American Splendor (Berman and Pulcini)

The best movies you probably haven't heard of: - Save the Green Planet! (Jang Joon-hwan's debut is an absolutely bizarre, offbeat sci-fi comedy thing that I can't do justice but can heartily recommend.) - Code 46 (Michael Winterbottom's sci-fi drama touches on familiar themes but it's one of the smartest and best-realized sci-fi films of the decade.)

This movie has the distinction of being among the few "teen scream" sequels that actually both builds on and improves on the original. It made it feel like the series was building to something, or that the characters might have a shot at dealing with the situation somehow, or at least understanding it. And then the next few sequels came out and just gave us less and less of the same.